David Rakoff, 1964-2012

"I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun — although I suppose I kind of am — as I am the opposite of fun. I suck the fun out of a room. Or perhaps I'm just a different kind of fun; the kind that leaves one bereft of hope; the kind of fun that ends in tears." —David Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems

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And that's what made David Rakoff so fun. The humorist, whose droll rants landed him somewhere between the erudite un-seriousness of David Sedaris and the wry social conscience of his This American Life colleague Ira Glass, was more enjoyable than a lot of his contemporary New York intelligentsia-types precisely because he wouldn't admit it. In a world too full of both the self-congratulatory and the optimistic, he was staunchly neither.

Take, for instance, the episode of This American Life (listen below) devoted to an event called "Contest-osterone," in which the show's crew had its testosterone levels tested and predicted the results based on personality traits. Now, no one, in this office or the man himself, would call Rakoff "manly." But he won, and surprised himself in doing so. Which might be the manliest thing of all.